Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (55 page)

The immediate concern was what to do with the Prophet’s corpse. In normal Muslim tradition, the body of the deceased was washed ritually before it was shrouded, except in the case of martyrs, whose blood was considered a sign of eternal glory. The Prophet had not died on the battlefield and yet there was much hesitation to strip him bare and wash him like any other man. I myself had never gazed upon the Prophet’s naked body, for he was exceedingly modest, as I have said, and even when we made love, it was under the cover of darkness.

As the men stood and argued about what to do, we heard a voice say loudly: “Wash the Messenger with his clothes on.” It was a deep voice of great authority and I thought at first that Umar had entered while we were talking. And yet when we turned to look, there was no one there but us. I felt my heart begin to race and I saw the frightened look on the others’ faces. But the words had been distinct and clear, and Zubayr went out and filled a pail of water from the ablution pool, which Ali then poured over the Messenger’s body, washing him and his garments clean one last time. The men then shrouded my husband in three layers of cloth, the first two of plain white Yemeni linen and the third a green-striped mantle that the Prophet had often worn.

I watched with a broken heart as Ali, Talha, and Zubayr placed the soft cloth over Muhammad’s gentle face, and I felt my eyes blur with grief as I realized that I would never see those beautiful features again, at least not until Judgment Day.

And then, when he was completely covered by the shroud, a new and more animated argument began as to where the Messenger of God should be buried. Some suggested that he should be placed in
Jannat al-Baqi,
the main cemetery of the oasis, next to his son Ibrahim. Others suggested that we take his body back to Mecca, where he could be buried beside Khadija. But the teachings of Islam called upon believers to inter the dead within one day, and the journey to Mecca was at least twenty by camel. A few contended that he should be buried by his uncle Hamza on the battlefield of Uhud or that a separate tomb should be erected at the outskirts of the city.

And then I heard a voice behind the men, and this time it was no mysterious angelic presence. My father stepped into my crowded apartment and wiped his eyes as he looked down on the shrouded figure who had been his best friend and master.

“The Messenger of God once told me that no prophet dies except that he is buried where he dies,” Abu Bakr said softly and then glanced at Ali. After a moment, the young man nodded his agreement.

That night, my apartment was turned into a tomb. Abu Bakr organized a small group of trusted Muslims to bring shovels and pickaxes, and they dug a grave directly under the spot where the Messenger had passed away in my arms. There was no grand ceremony, and most of the city was unaware of what was happening. Abu Bakr had wisely reasoned that emotions were still running high and a public funeral could still incite passions that would be difficult to contain.

The handful of believers privy to the secret burial stood behind the Prophet’s body and prayed the funeral prayer. My father refused to lead the
janaza
prayer over the body, an act of presumption in his eyes, and he moved to stand beside Umar, Uthman, and Ali in a straight line behind the shrouded corpse.

And then, when the rituals were complete and there was nothing left to be said or done, Ali climbed down into the grave and my husband’s body was gently lowered into his arms. He placed the body on its right shoulder, as was the custom, with the face pointing south to Mecca.

And then as the believers poured dust over the body until it was completely covered, Muhammad vanished into the earth from which our father Adam had been born.

I
n the months following the Messenger’s death, my father was forced to face the first challenge of his caliphate: the rebellion of the Bedouin tribes. With Muhammad dead, many of the southern tribes declared that their treaties with the nascent Arabian state had been nullified and that they no longer felt bound by the authority of Medina. Some openly declared their apostasy, returning to the worship of the old gods. Others, perhaps realizing that the ancient practices were pointless now that Mecca itself had banned all idols, declared that they remained believers but refused to pay the
zakat,
the tax that was levied on the citizens to provide for the poor. But a few posed a greater problem, for they had joined forces with Musaylima and Sajah, the two false prophets who now declared themselves to be speaking in God’s name. The two pretenders to the mantle of prophecy had married and had brought their followers together in an alliance against Medina.

Of all the troublesome rebels, that last group was the most immediate danger. For the central tenet of Islam was that Muhammad was the final prophet of God. Any who arose after him were impostors who had to be defeated before they misled the people. And Musaylima was no wandering madman spouting prophecies. He had gathered the disaffected tribes of the eastern Najd to his side, and our spies estimated that he was amassing a force of almost forty thousand tribesmen, the largest army ever to assemble in the sands of Arabia.

And so my father dispatched Khalid ibn al-Waleed, the man my husband had proclaimed as the Sword of Allah, to face this new and grave threat to the future of Islam. Khalid’s forces confronted Musaylima’s armies at Yamamah, in the heart of eastern Arabia. Although numbering only thirteen thousand men, Khalid’s forces were better organized and disciplined than the tribal fighters. Khalid divided the troops into three wings and took personal command of the center. The battle was brutal, but the Muslims had the advantage of zeal and an utter fearlessness in the face of death that unnerved the Bedouins. The tribesmen scattered, leaving Musaylima only seven thousand fanatically loyal men, who walled themselves inside a garden. A foolish mistake, for now they were trapped and surrounded on all sides. Muslim warriors scaled the walls and broke down the doors, flooding into the enclave, which would forever after be known as the Garden of Death. The followers of the false prophet were massacred, and Musaylima himself was killed, struck down by Wahsi’s infamous javelin. The Abyssinian slave who had murdered Hamza had finally cleansed himself of his sin. Sajah, Musaylima’s wife and fellow claimant to prophecy, was captured and quickly embraced Islam. Khalid let her go, and she vanished into the desert.

With the death of Musaylima, the fire of the old pagan ways was quenched in Arabia. My father had successfully managed to quell the revolt of the Arab tribes. He had gained the trust and respect of the Muslims and was now busy administering the affairs of state. One of the thorniest issues he faced was dealing with my husband’s estate. Though Muhammad had died having given all of his worldly wealth and possessions away to the poor, there were several tracts of land, small gardens in Khaybar and the nearby oasis of Fadak, that had been spoils of war after the defeat of the Jews of Arabia. My husband had administered these lands while he was alive, feeding his family and the needy with the produce of the gardens. One day Fatima came to Abu Bakr and asked that these gardens be relinquished to her and her children as her inheritance. The People of the House were desperately poor, despite being the only surviving bloodline of the Prophet, and the gardens would help them ease the daily struggle to put food on their table.

My father was in an awkward position, and he gently told Fatima that the Messenger had once said to him that prophets leave behind no inheritance, that all their wealth should be given to the community. It was a comment that Muhammad had made to me in passing as well, and I spoke up in support of my father’s judgment. But Fatima was livid, claiming that Abu Bakr was stealing her patrimony, and she stormed out of my father’s house, leaving him heartbroken. He had done what he thought was the right thing according to his best understanding of the Prophet’s wishes, but it had only increased the chasm of pain that had opened up between him and the Messenger’s family.

Shortly thereafter, my father tried to reach a compromise. He learned that a Jew from Bani Nadir who had converted to Islam had died childless and had left the Prophet seven small garden plots in Medina in his will. Abu Bakr appointed Ali and the Prophet’s uncle Abbas to administer the gardens on behalf of the Messenger’s descendants. But Fatima refused to be reconciled by this gesture. She never spoke to my father after that day when he had first refused her claim to inheritance, despite his repeated overtures. Abu Bakr once told me that of all the things he had lost in the course of his life—his wealth, his youth, his health—nothing grieved him more than his estrangement from the sweet girl whom he had always loved like his own daughter.

O
NE NIGHT, SIX MONTHS
after Muhammad died, I lay in my bed, hovering on the edge of sleep. I tossed and turned on the sheepskin mattress on which I could still sometimes smell the scent of my husband, the strange aura of roses that always seemed to follow him in life. It had taken me some time to get used to sleeping in my apartment again, knowing that the Messenger was buried only a few feet away. But I had eventually grown accustomed to the strange feeling that I was never quite alone, that he was very much there with me, and not just in a metaphorical sense.

There was a heaviness in the room, as if the air itself had changed since the day he died, and eventually, as I learned to fall asleep again in the apartment, I started having vivid dreams, filled with strange and beautiful lights and colors I had never imagined. I would often wake up in the middle of the night thinking I had heard his voice or felt the touch of his cool hand on my hair. Over time, these experiences became part of my daily life and I eventually accepted them without question, if only to keep my sanity. But in the early days, it had been difficult and frightening, as if I were living in a portal between two worlds, and I was never quite sure which one I was in at any given moment.

And then on that cool winter night, something happened that I have never forgotten, something that still sends chills down my spine when I think of it. The heaviness in the air had grown almost intolerable, and I found that I had to breathe in deeper and deeper just to fill my lungs. It was as if a thick curtain were falling down on top of me, and I found it hard to move, as if I were being tied down by invisible ropes.

I struggled against the pressure, like a drowning woman deep underwater and desperately trying to rise to the surface to breathe. And then I heard a woman’s voice, which I thought must be coming from the courtyard of the Masjid. But the voice grew closer and clearer and I realized that it was whispering right beside me. Despite the heavy air that was holding me down, I managed to turn my head and look.

And I saw Fatima standing a few feet away. She was dressed in silvery white robes, her hair covered in a scarf that seemed to be glittering with stars. She was standing above her father’s grave, speaking words to him that I could not understand. The language was not Arabic, nor did it sound like the foreign tongues I had heard spoken in the marketplace—Persian, Greek, Amharic, Coptic. In fact, I could not say that she was speaking words at all. The sounds that were coming out of her lips were rhythmic and lyrical, almost like a song rather than speech.

I wanted to call out to her, to ask why she had come in the middle of the night, whether everything was all right for her and her children. But no words came out of my mouth. I simply stared at her, transfixed, until she finally turned to look at me.

And then I felt my breathing stop altogether. I recognized her and yet, at the same time, I did not. I somehow knew that the woman standing before me was Fatima, but her face had been wondrously transformed. Gone were the plain, harsh features, the long face that was always drawn in sadness. And in its place was the face of a new Fatima, a woman of such intense beauty and perfection that she no longer looked human. She had become what I had imagined an angel to be when I was a child. Her skin, which had often suffered from rashes and pimples, was now flawless and her cheekbones were crafted with such perfection that she looked like a living statue. Her eyebrows, once thick and unruly, looked as if they had been painted on her face. Her lips were no longer chapped, but full and sensuous, and her unruly hair now flowed like honey around her delicate shoulders, which had once been mannish and square.

The only thing about her that was unchanged was her eyes, the same black eyes that had belonged to her father, eyes that looked as if they could see deep into the farthest reaches of your soul.

She looked at me with those luminous eyes and smiled. And when she spoke, her voice sounded like the tinkling of bells.

“Tell your father that I understand now,” she said, and her words echoed as if she were calling to me from across a great chasm. “I understand and I forgive.”

Then she raised her right hand to me as if waving farewell. And my heart skipped a beat when I saw that in the center of her palm was what looked like a glowing blue orb shaped like an eye.

I stared into the swirling light at the palm of her hand as it grew brighter and brighter, until my entire room was bathed in its ethereal shine. The darkness of my room vanished in the cascade of wondrous azure light, as bright as heaven itself on a cloudless summer day.

I
WOKE WITH A
start to hear cries of grief from the courtyard. I looked around in confusion, expecting to see Fatima standing in the corner, but I was very much alone. As the sound of weeping intensified, I threw on a cloak and wrapped my face hastily behind a veil before peering outside.

A crowd of what looked like mourners had gathered in the courtyard, tearing at their clothes and wailing in sorrow.

“What is it?” I cried to them. “What has happened?”

A middle-aged woman stumbled toward me, slapping her breast and pulling at her hair.

“O Mother, the
Ummah
is bereft! Fatima the Shining has returned to our Lord!”

I felt my knees grow weak.

“When?” I managed to croak out. “When did this happen?”

An elderly man looked at me, his wrinkled face twisted in pain.

“Our master Ali said she died at sunset yesterday,” he sobbed. “He buried her in secret so that no man would worship her grave as the ignorant did of old.”

I sank to the ground, not able to comprehend what he’d just said. If Fatima had died the evening before, who had I seen in my room later that night?

No. I had imagined it. It was a dream, I told myself, nothing more, nothing less.

And then I remembered something that Fatima had said to me once when we were young girls in Mecca, a lifetime ago. I had told her that I had suffered through a bad dream the night before, one where I was being chased by a frightening old hag wearing a golden snake on her arm.

Fatima had simply shrugged and said not to worry. It was just a dream and no more real than anything else in life.

“What do you mean?” I asked, questioning her strange comment.

And then Fatima had fixed me with those powerful black eyes and spoke words that now echoed across the bridge of time.

“Life itself is a dream. When we die, we awake.”